Highly creative models made

If the creativity of the second-year architecture students at the Nelson Mandela University in Port Elizabeth is anything to go by, the face of the Point area will change dramatically when the Point Discovery Centre is constructed at the old stone quarry site at the Point.

The students' models for the centre were on display at the Architectural Engagements with our Human Origins exhibition in Port Elizabeth last week, the outcome of an academic assignment given to the students.

The group, under the leadership of one their lecturers, John Andrews, visited Mossel Bay in August to familiarise themselves with the site for the centre. They also visited the archaeology site at Pinnacle Point and were briefed by the Point Discovery Centre board on its objectives and vision for the proposed centre.

The 40 students were divided into teams of five each. Each group had to build an architectural model showing their vision for the centre. The models on display ranged from ultra-modern designs to centres in the form of fish traps and shell middens.

The eight displays were called The Shard, The Shepherd, Thrown Shells, Fish Traps, Caved Mass, Space of Past Landscapes, Shell Middens, Space of Past Landscapes, Shell Middens and The Nomad.

In his address at the function, Andrew Palframan, head of the NMU School of Architecture, described the work of the group of second-year students as at a level normally only achieved by students in their fifth year.

Two Point Discovery Centre NPC board members, Advocate Mignon du Toit and Harry Hill, represented the company at the exhibition. They also had preliminary discussions with Professor George de Lange and the lecturers on bringing the exhibition to Mossel Bay for the local community to see.

The Point Discovery Centre non-profit company is tasked with the establishment of an interpretation centre for the archaeological discoveries at Pinnacle Point.

It has concluded a Memorandum of Understanding with NMU for cooperation and assistance with various aspects of the development of the centre after having consulted the majority of the universities in South Africa.

The discoveries at Pinnacle Point date back 164 000 years, and yielded the oldest evidence to date of the early development of modern human behaviour.

The site is regarded as one of the three most important archaeological sites in the world related to the origins of modern human behaviour.

The site is inscribed, together with other caves along the South Africa coast, on UNESCO’s tentative list for World Heritage status.

The discoveries were made in, and in the vicinity of, Cave 13B at Pinnacle Point, by an international team headed by Professor Curtis W Marean of Arizona State University in the United States.

The team included researchers from South Africa (University of Cape Town), Australia (Archaeology Programme, La Trobe University), Israel and France.

One of the students’ models - Space of Past Landscapes – motivated by the centrifugal nature of a fire gathering, producing a number of pods, each with its own surprises and flexibility, to be reinterpreted by individual curators and artists.